


making triumphant returns

by returnsandreturns



Category: Grand Theft Auto V
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Child Abuse, Domestic Violence, M/M, perpetual WIP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-15
Updated: 2015-06-15
Packaged: 2018-04-04 14:12:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4140756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/returnsandreturns/pseuds/returnsandreturns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael doesn’t even wake up until Trevor’s crawling into his bed, when he starts and says, “Who the—god, T.” </p><p>“Go back to sleep, angel face,” Trevor says, roughly. “Dream sweet dreams of the world not chewing us up and spitting us the fuck back out.” </p><p>“Your dad?” Michael asks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	making triumphant returns

**Author's Note:**

> this is another WIP I will try to update sporadically but, for now, probably take it as a one-shot?? 
> 
> this stupid game wrecked my stupid soul

CPS has stopped coming to the Philips residence entirely. Trevor’s pretty sure they’re not allowed to declare anyone a lost cause, but he kept touching the social worker’s knee during the last visit, making eyes at her because he didn’t like the way she was judging him and he wanted to make her squirm. They’ve run through everybody the county’s sent out at the request of Ryan’s teachers, who see bruises and dirty clothes and how fucking nice Ryan is despite it. They want to fix them, because someday Ryan will go to college and do real shit and it will be a gold star on their record, the kid that would’ve been OD’d at twenty-four trailer trash if it weren’t for them.

Trevor’s teachers have stopped calling. 

“Call the _fucking cops_ ,” his mom grits out, after her favorite coffee mug smashes against the wall and his dad’s movements make the whole trailer shake. She’s already pushed Ryan out the front door, and she’s thrusting the handheld at Trevor, who’s standing stockstill with his back to the door.

“They ain’t coming fast enough!” Trevor says, taking the phone anyway, digging his fingers into it. They need to get to a gun; they need to get to a gun and fucking kill him. His dad sweeps a big arm out, knocks their pathetic dining room table over so it slams against the wall and the plastic dishes scatter everywhere. 

“We’re going to get you put away where you belong, you piece of shit,” his mom says, ignoring Trevor and taking one step towards his dad. 

Trevor dials 911 without taking his eyes off his dad, who lurches for his mom, shoving her up against the opposite wall with one hand. She gasps out a broken noise, kicking out as soon as she recovers, trying to catch his knees. When he slaps her, harder than Trevor’s ever seen, Trevor’s whole world collapses and goes white. 

When the tinny voice on the phone asks, “911, what’s your emergency?” Trevor is already hitting his father over the head with it as hard as he can. 

*

Trevor wakes up on the couch with Ryan sitting on the floor beside him, holding a dog-eared paperback book. He looks up when Trevor stirs, smiling with one corner of his mouth. Trevor groans in response and gropes at his head, feeling makeshift bandages wrapped around it. He remembers, distantly, his dad’s fingernails digging into his scalp as he pulled him off—he remembers his head bouncing against the window and he remembers a buzzing noise deep, deep in his brain. 

“I called 911,” Trevor mumbles. 

“We can’t afford the hospital bills,” Ryan says. “Mom convinced them that it was just the two of us playing a prank, so they didn’t send anyone out.” 

“Good,” Trevor replies, falling back down.

“Not really,” Ryan says. “You probably have a concussion.”

“Good,” Trevor growls. “Maybe I won’t wake up next time.” 

“Don’t say that.” 

It’s silent for a nice long moment, just the sound of their mom pacing in her bedroom and people shouting somewhere outside, far enough away that he can’t make out a single word. Ryan sighs. He sounds older than thirteen, like someone’s fucking grandfather. 

“Dad left again,” he says. 

“I suspect we’ll see him in about. . .” Trevor shifts enough to stare blearily at the clock on the battered microwave. “Five hours, after last call, when he’ll make his usual dramatic, whiskey-fueled entrance to start round two.” 

“Ma said. . .” Ryan starts and then draws off, looking down at the book in his hands. 

Trevor feels his stomach flip at the tone of his voice, a desperate somersault of motion inside him. He crawls off the couch to sit across from Ryan on the floor, shoving at his shoulder.

“ _What_?” he asks. “What the fuck did Ma say?” 

Ryan doesn’t look at him when he says, “She says it would be better if you weren’t here when he comes back.” 

Trevor thinks about the buzzing in his head for a brief second, the flash of white before he was hitting his father hard and fast and over and over until the telephone and his fingernails were covered in blood. It’s still dried on his fingers. He can’t stop the tears that spring up, but he hides them from Ryan, jumping to his feet and taking the three steps to press himself against his mom’s bedroom door and says, lips pressed close to the hole in the particle board that his dad put his fist through last December, “Ma, please tell me I don’t have to leave. Don’t make me leave you.” 

He knows that she was listening to them. You can’t hide anything from people when you live in a house made of goddamn cardboard. She stops pacing, and he can hear her breathing on the other side.

He whispers, “Please, please, please,” around shuddering breaths, high little kid sobs that he should be ashamed of at sixteen but it’s his mom. She’s all he’s ever had. She huffs out a hard breath. 

“There’s not room in this fucking box for you and that asshole,” she says. “Just stop. . . _stop fucking crying_ and get out before he comes back and makes another scene.” 

Trevor feels the floor slip away from him but he’s still on his feet when his head stops spinning. Numbly, ignoring Ryan watching him from the floor, he grabs the backpack he stole from Goodwill at the beginning of the school year and starts stuffing things into it at random. When he slings it over his shoulder and heads for the door, pretending like he’s not about to collapse, Ryan says his name and then nothing else. Trevor looks back at him briefly before he says, “Good fucking luck,” and slams out of the trailer.

*

When he climbs into Michael’s window, it’s after 3:00 AM and he had already hitched a ride with a creepy motherfucker who he had to pull a knife on to make sure he didn’t do anything funny. He made the dude drop him off a few neighborhoods up so Michael wouldn’t have some old asshole jerking off outside his window and he stumbled the rest of the way. His leg might be sprained, he thinks, as he hauls himself up and into the room and feels pain shooting through his whole body.

Michael doesn’t even wake up until Trevor’s crawling into his bed, when he starts and says, “Who the—god, T.” 

“Go back to sleep, angel face,” Trevor says, roughly. “Dream sweet dreams of the world not chewing us up and spitting us the fuck back out.” 

“Your dad?” Michael asks. 

Trevor doesn’t reply, just snakes an arm around Michael’s stomach despite a mumbled protest and curls up enough to press his face against his back. Michael doesn’t press the subject, because he’s got a decent enough survival instinct to know better. Trevor just wants to go to sleep here, but his heart’s beating too fast and he can’t stop moving, shifting against Michael to try to find a position where he can calm down. 

“Y’know, if my dad catches us in bed like this, he’s going to beat the shit out of both of us,” Michael says, glancing back and then frowning, “and. . .well, based on your head wound there, I’m pretty sure you might die this time.” 

Trevor grinds a little against Michael’s ass in reply, but Michael ignores him, turning around so they’re face to face and leaning up on an elbow to inspect the bandage on Trevor’s head. He runs careful fingers over it, lifting it slightly so Trevor winces at the feel of tacky blood pulling at this skin and pushes Michael back down. He hovers over him for a second, looking at the way Michael’s eyes go wide and his mouth goes slack, before he turns back to face the wall and shut his eyes, overwhelmed.

“ _Fuck_ your dad,” he says, eventually, and Michael laughs.

“Same, man.”

*

They sit at the bus stop together the next morning, getting up early to get out before Michael’s parents wake up. His mom has no problem with Trevor; likes him, even, says he’s a nice boy compared to those football players, but Michael’s dad is drinking buddies with Trevor’s dad, which means Michael’s dad gets a stream of news about how Trevor’s a useless fuckup they would’ve aborted if they’d had the money.

Trevor thinks Michael’s dad also heard about the time Trevor got caught on his knees behind the neighbor’s trailer, sucking this kid’s dick in exchange for weed, and about how he ended up in the E.R. after his dad’s reaction. He hasn’t said anything, but he watches him closely when he’s around Michael, like he’s waiting for him to make a move. 

When he showed up at school a few days after that, face bruised almost beyond recognition, all he told Michael was that he didn’t know what had set his dad off this time, that he’s just crazy and he’s always gonna be crazy and Trevor’s staring down the end of his own gun, there. 

“You wanna go to the strip mall downtown and see what we can grab?” Michael asks, legs kicked out in front of him and crossed at the ankle. 

“You’re not suggesting that we _shoplift_ , are you, Michael?” Trevor asks. “That’s _illegal_.” 

“Bet I can get a better haul than you,” Michael says, ignoring him. Trevor tips back his head and grins at the sky, pale purple, barely turning blue. 

“We’ll fucking see about that.”

Michael leans over to bump their shoulders together, grinning back at him when he turns to look at him. 

On the bus, they play Michael’s favorite game, which is to figure out who has the best tits onboard. They get into a fight because they can’t agree on the number one pick and don’t talk to each other until they get off the bus in front of the mall, when Trevor says, “Just because tits are older doesn’t mean they’re not great tits. Those tits have history.” 

Michael scoffs. 

“Whatever,” he says. “Let’s get our plan straight.” 

“Plan?” Trevor repeats, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet and gazing across the parking lot. “I thought this was a reckless crime spree.” 

“If you want to end up back in juvie, sure.” 

Trevor does not want to end up back in juvie. 

“Okay, plan,” he says.

In the end, they split up the six stores that are still open, hitting three a piece. Trevor is working out how to get the security stickers off CDs without anybody noticing, planning to shove them in the waistband of his jeans and just run like hell if the alarms go off anyway when he hears the alarms triggered at the jewelry store next door. They were going to meet in the middle. He drops the stack of CDs on the floor and sprints out to see Michael struggling to get away from a big security guard, kicking and cursing. 

In an elegant move, Trevor runs forward to kick the guard in the shins as hard as he can, surprising him enough that he drops Michael and Trevor can grab him by the hand and pull him towards the alley. They run until they can’t anymore, stopping to hide behind the dumpsters behind the grocery store three blocks away. 

Trevor laughs as Michael doubles over, out of breath. He says, “Shut the fuck up,” before Trevor even has the chance to say anything, and it just makes Trevor laugh harder, falling back against the brick wall. 

From nearby, a police siren starts up and Michael jumps and hisses, “Fuck,” and pushes Trevor into the space between the dumpster and the wall then slides in next to him. They’re pressed together, chest to chest, and Michael stares up at Trevor for a few frantic seconds before he drops his head to rest it against his shoulder. He’s got his eyes shut tight like that’ll help hide them. They stay like that until the sirens have faded away into the distance, when Trevor shuffles them back out. He adjusts his jeans and hopes Michael doesn’t notice.

“At least tell me you pocketed something decent,” he says, and Michael digs in his pockets to pull out a handful of rings and tangled, delicate gold chains. 

“Shit they put on the display counter, but I bet we could pawn ‘em,” he says.

Trevor takes one of the rings and slips it onto his pinkie, holding it up to the sunlight.

“What about you?” Michael asks. “What did you get?” 

Trevor grins at him and pulls out the folded up cash bag that was stuffed in his back pocket, the kind that employees fill up from the register to take back to the safe. Trevor was a firm believer in being in the right place at the right time, wandering by the registers in time to see a manager sit a handful of the bags down on the counter to talk to the cashier. They weren’t even paying attention as Trevor swiped the thickest one, probably won’t notice for a few more minutes, at least, if they do more than throw it in the safe for someone else to deal with later.

When he opens it up to see how much money is inside, Michael whistles, low.

“That’s gotta be, what, five hundred or more?” 

“More,” Trevor agrees, flipping through the stack of 10s and 20s, a few 100s. 

“Jesus, we got to get back on a bus before they check their security cameras and get the cops out again,” Michael says. He throws an arm around Trevor’s shoulders then starts laughing, pulling him in for a hug, hitting him on the back. “Five hundred dollars. What are you gonna do with it?” 

“Invest it, Mikey,” Trevor says, pulling away just to grab Michael’s face and press a wet kiss to his cheek that makes him laugh and pull a face. A joke, even though Trevor feels his blood heat up at the contact. “In our promising goddamn futures.” 

That night, they get the dude who hangs out at the liquor store to buy them fifths of nice whiskey and get drunk in the parking lot. They stay out all night because Michael doesn’t want to go home and Trevor doesn’t have a home to go to anymore. Eventually, they fall asleep in the public park in the nicer part of town, sitting up against one of the trees, empty bottles at their feet—and they wake up to sprinklers and sunlight and concerned families wheeling their kids away and it’s perfect. Michael at his side, pocket full of money, and nothing on the horizon.

**Author's Note:**

> detectivekatebishop on the tumblr


End file.
